Hourly Workers

Nuclear-skilled hourly workers at Newport News Shipbuilding will rally this morning before first shift to show their shop's unity amid contract negotiations with the yard. "We're going to show the company that we're strong," said union organizer Darnell Lewis. "We're 100 percent on day shift in their most crucial department." The nuclear department is critical because it's the yard's nuclear construction and repair capabilities that set Newport News apart from other shipyards.

Auto parts manufacturer Continental AG laid off 49 of its roughly 350 hourly workers in January, exactly one month after the company announced it would receive up to $32 million from the city and the state to relocate its South Carolina manufacturing plant here, the company confirmed Monday. The job cuts, which affected about 14 percent of the company's hourly employees - some of whom have been with the company for up to 14 years - were due to continued pullbacks from U.S. automakers Ford Motor Co., Chrysler LLC and General Motors Corp.

Newport News Shipbuilding handed out layoff notices Friday to 700 employees, completing the notification of workers in the yard's second major roll reduction this year. Among those informed Friday were 350 hourly workers - the first blue-collar employees to be cut in nearly six years - and an equal number of salaried employees, said spokesman Jack Schnaedter. About 150 salaried workers got layoff notices last week, bringing the total for the latest round of cuts to 850, Schnaedter said.

The 1,050 hourly workers at International Paper's Franklin mill will be eligible to apply for voluntary severance packages, the company said Wednesday. The goal is to avert layoffs after International Paper shuts down one of its five machines Sunday, communications manager Desmond Stills said. The severance offer will be open through Dec. 8, he said. The company announced last week that it would close the machine because of declining demand for envelope paper. Fifty affected employees will be transferred within the mill during the interim, Stills said.

Newport News Shipbuilding has quietly resumed laying off workers, notifying 37 employees last week, and a spokesman said Monday there would be more cuts in coming months. The latest hourly and salaried workers to be eliminated received 60 days' notice as of last Thursday, said Jack A. Garrow, shipyard spokesman. "This will be, as we said before, more or less regular throughout the year," Garrow added. "From time to time this will happen as an adjustment to balance our work force against the workload that we have as we draw down and we reshape the shipyard," Garrow said.

A Northrop Grumman Newport News policy offers medical benefits to salaried employees' domestic partners but isn't available to hourly workers. If you're a salaried worker at the Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard, you can qualify for domestic-partner benefits -- medical, dental and vision care coverage -- for an established live-in heterosexual or homosexual partner, married or not. But if you're an hourly worker, you can't. Under the terms of the new 52-month labor contract signed in June between the yard and the United Steelworkers of America, coverage for hourly workers is limited to a married spouse and children.

More than 500 down, 5,500 to go. That's roughly where Newport News Shipbuilding stood at the end of May, two months into its plan to slash 6,000 to 7,000 jobs from its 21,000-person workforce by the end of 1996. Last month the yard handed out 111 pink slips - 100 to hourly workers and 11 to salaried workers, said yard spokesman Jack A. Garrow. Those workers' last day will be in July. Most of the hourly workers let go in May were grinders, whose work includes smoothing welds, and machinists, Garrow said.

Workers have joined Newport News Shipbuilding's main union slightly faster than usual since the company announced its second major layoff this year, the president of Local 8888 of the United Steelworkers of America union said Tuesday. But the union local's total membership has only increased slightly as the bargaining unit has shrunk in the midst of a long hiring freeze, said local President Raymond Coppedge. Coppedge declined to disclose the number of dues-paying members, long a sensitive issue among union officers.

When Hurricane Isabel hit the Peninsula, most workplaces shut down for a few days. Whether workers got paid for that time off depended on which company they worked for -- and in some cases, what their job titles were. Hurricane Isabel had a cost in the workplace. Some companies chose to eat that cost completely, while others asked employees to share the burden by giving up wages or using vacation days. "Multiply average rate of pay times number of hours people are off, and that's one small measure of your loss of productivity, not to mention all the product you didn't make and the sales you didn't get," said Deborah Keary, spokeswoman for the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association for human resource managers.

In a continuing bid to trim employment, Newport News Shipbuilding has cut about 500 blue-collar jobs through normal attrition so far this year and limited summer hiring to a fifth of last year's level, a yard spokesman said Wednesday. For the first six months of the year, attrition among hourly workers has been about the rate the shipyard had expected, said spokesman Jack Garrow. In January, when the company announced layoffs of salaried employees, it said it hoped to cut 1,000 hourly jobs by the end of the year through attrition - retirements, resignations and firings such as those for disciplinary problems.

The company says the appraisals are meant as "a feedback tool." The union says they're essentially useless. Northrop Grumman Newport News is issuing performance evaluations for thousands of hourly shipyard production workers. Such appraisal forms long have been allowed under contracts between the yard and its biggest union, the United Steelworkers, which represents over 9,200 employees. But the yard had not used the evaluations for several years because it didn't want to take supervisors off tight ship production deadlines to fill them out. This year, however, the yard is requiring supervisors to issue them.

Younger workers are increasingly receptive to joining the Steelworkers, the leadership says. It's long been a practice that some hourly workers at the Newport News shipyard would sign up for the United Steelworkers of America in advance of contract negotiations. Then they'd relinquish their membership -- and stop paying union dues -- after the new contract is in place. But leaders of Steelworkers Local 8888 at Northrop Grumman Newport News said they're actively working to stem that tide.

A Northrop Grumman Newport News policy offers medical benefits to salaried employees' domestic partners but isn't available to hourly workers. If you're a salaried worker at the Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard, you can qualify for domestic-partner benefits -- medical, dental and vision care coverage -- for an established live-in heterosexual or homosexual partner, married or not. But if you're an hourly worker, you can't. Under the terms of the new 52-month labor contract signed in June between the yard and the United Steelworkers of America, coverage for hourly workers is limited to a married spouse and children.

Hourly workers will vote on the proposed pact Wednesday. Approval would avert a strike. Negotiators from United Steelworkers of America Local 8888 announced Saturday that they came to tentative terms with Northrop Grumman Newport News on a new labor contract that would expire in October 2008. The agreement sharply reduces the chances for a strike at the shipyard, a maker of aircraft carriers and submarines for the Navy and Hampton Roads' largest private employer. The union had threatened to walk out if an agreement wasn't reached by the expiration of the current contract at midnight today.

When Hurricane Isabel hit the Peninsula, most workplaces shut down for a few days. Whether workers got paid for that time off depended on which company they worked for -- and in some cases, what their job titles were. Hurricane Isabel had a cost in the workplace. Some companies chose to eat that cost completely, while others asked employees to share the burden by giving up wages or using vacation days. "Multiply average rate of pay times number of hours people are off, and that's one small measure of your loss of productivity, not to mention all the product you didn't make and the sales you didn't get," said Deborah Keary, spokeswoman for the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association for human resource managers.

Northrop Grumman Newport News made what it figured to be a simple proposal to some of its hourly workers. The company offered to give some of its hourly employees a half-day's pay to attend today's special keel-laying ceremony for the Texas, one of the government's newest attack submarines. During these types of events, the yard has to close down the part of the yard where the ceremony is taking place; workers get the time off without pay. For the Texas ceremony, the company offered to give some hourly workers a half day's pay to see the event.

The 1,050 hourly workers at International Paper's Franklin mill will be eligible to apply for voluntary severance packages, the company said Wednesday. The goal is to avert layoffs after International Paper shuts down one of its five machines Sunday, communications manager Desmond Stills said. The severance offer will be open through Dec. 8, he said. The company announced last week that it would close the machine because of declining demand for envelope paper. Fifty affected employees will be transferred within the mill during the interim, Stills said.

HAMPTON ROADS NEW REPAIRS, NEW MONEY. Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. has won a contract to repair a privately owned ship that moves military equipment to global hot spots - and it has a near-lock on repairing two similar vessels. Norfolk-based Maersk Line Limited gave the yard the contract to repair the MV Pfc. William Baugh, a Military Sealift Command prepositioning ship. Terms weren't disclosed. The Baugh arrived at the yard early Monday. The work is scheduled to be finished April 4. SWITCHING IN EFFECT.

In response to a six-month study that found low wages and a high turnover rate for employees at the College of William and Mary, President Timothy J. Sullivan announced Tuesday pay increases for 290 of the college's non-student hourly and classified workers. The increases will take effect with the pay period beginning Oct. 25 and include a 10-percent raise for William and Mary employees who make less than $7.53 an hour. For a worker making $6.50 an hour, the increase means an extra $900 for the remainder of the fiscal year, officials said.

The signs are unmistakable, in the view of Arnold Outlaw, president of Local 8888 of the United Steelworkers union: Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. is gearing up for layoffs. "A lot of workers are getting moved from one department to another," Outlaw said. "That is a true sign of layoffs. The next thing to come is the notices." Outlaw predicted the yard would lay off 500 workers in the next several weeks. Yard officials confirmed a high likelihood of temporary layoffs, but said no one would probably be let go for about three months.